Google's DoubleClick acquisition "major setback" for privacy advocates

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 12 March 2008 01:09

Your IT - Home IT

Frank said that "this abdication of jurisdiction is a major setback for privacy advocates who had been relying on these bodies to acknowledge what they see as a compelling connection between privacy and anti-trust. They will now have to take a different tack and seek other alliances within the US Congress and European Parliament."

He forecast that privacy advocates would face an uphill battle in getting their concerns addressed. "A deteriorating economy will favour the self-regulation position of industry lobbyists, because: US voters have other things on their minds; and legislators are likely to take a strong 'do no harm to the economy' approach when considering new privacy regulations. For both privacy advocates and industry leaders, this is likely to lead to a renewed focus on the grassroots battleground of popular opinion."

Frank suggests that privacy advocates may find the mainstream news organisations siding with them in the battle. He noted a recent New York Times report of research it commissioned from ComScore to estimate the amount of  consumer data that is available to Internet companies.

Reporting on this research , the NYT said: "Privacy advocates have previously sounded alarms about the practices of Internet companies and provided vague estimates about the volume of data they collect, but they did not give comprehensive figures...The Web companies are, in effect, taking the trail of crumbs people leave behind as they move around the Internet, and then analysing them to anticipate people's next steps. So anybody who searches for information on such disparate topics as iron supplements, airlines, hotels and soft drinks may see ads for those products and services later on."

And it noted that "The rich troves of data at the fingertips of the biggest Internet companies are also creating a new kind of digital divide within the industry. Traditional media companies, which collect far less data about visitors to their sites, are increasingly at a disadvantage when they compete for ad dollars."

Frank concluded that the challenge for privacy advocates would be "to better articulate the threat and the remedy in language consumers can relate to " and that for Google and DoubleClick "the counterchallenge will be to pursue an aggressive agenda of more control and transparency around data collection practices while continuing to grow their businesses."